Populating a form's textfields from a php script then showing the form

limey

Can somebody help me to get this code to work please.

Step by step:

Step 1. I show a form to the user. They enter information to use to query the database. Press 'Find' this then posts the form variables to the next script.

Step 2. The next script then uses these posted values for the WHERE clause of a SELECT statement. The select statement returns one row, a uinque match. Then I want to put this information into a table with textfields in another form(script) and show that form in the browser.

if($row=mysql_fetch_object($resultSet))
{
echo "<input type=\"text\" name=\"ID\" value=\"$row['taskID']\">";
//etc fields
//show completed_form.php This already exists and has a table with textfields in it that need populating by this script.
}

End result - automatically completed from showing in browser

devinemke

here's a very simple (and untested) example:

if (!isset ($_POST['submit']))
{
	echo '
	<form action="' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '" method="POST">
	email: <input type="text" name="email">
	<input type="submit" name="submit" value="find">
	</form>
	';
}

if (isset ($_POST['submit']) && $_POST['submit'] == 'find')
{
	$result = mysql_query ("SELECT * FROM table WHERE email = '" . $_POST['email'] . "'");
	if (mysql_num_rows ($result)) {$row = mysql_fetch_assoc ($result);}
	else {echo 'no records found matching ' . $_POST['email'];}

echo '
<form action="' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '" method="POST">
name: <input type="text" name="name" value="' . $row['name'] . '"><br>
email: <input type="text" name="email" value="' . $row['email'] . '"><br>
address: <input type="text" name="address" value="' . $row['address'] . '"><br>
phone: <input type="text" name="phone" value="' . $row['phone'] . '"><br>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="update">
</form>
';
}

limey

echo '
<form action="' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '" method="POST">
name: <input type="text" name="name" value="' . $row['name'] . '"><br>
email: <input type="text" name="email" value="' . $row['email'] . '"><br>
address: <input type="text" name="address" value="' . $row['address'] . '"><br>
phone: <input type="text" name="phone" value="' . $row['phone'] . '"><br>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="update">
</form>
';

This produces the populated textfields as planned. However, the form already exists as a formatted form with a table and associated textfields that I want to populate. Any suggestions, I've tried all sorts of ways but can't get it working properly.

I need to do something like:
'form[<input type="text" name="name" value="' . $row['event_name'] . '">]';

or something ?

devinemke

i'm a bit confused. can't you simply alter the code on your existing form to echo out the values from the $row (like in my example)?

limey

sorry, my explanation was a bit sketchy.

The form exists within another php script which I want to reference and populate then show in the browser.

devinemke

ok then. my question still stands. can't you simply alter the code on your existing form (in the other script) to echo out the values from the $row (like in my example)? is the existing script that contains the form your script or is it hosted elswhere? perhaps i am still not undertsanding what's going on here. the form code will have to be written (re-written) to spit out incoming data to pre-populate the fields.

limey

Sorry, my mistake. I've been trying to make the solution harder than it needs to be. I have done as you suggested and it works absolutely fine.

Thank you for your help devinemke.

limey

The code below works fine. However, I now want to change the textfield values once the form is shown in the browser and post the new values back to the database. Basically, the current solution assigns query values to the value parameter of the input type. I change the values in the textfields then post to the database but still have the initial values because they are hard-coded into the textbox. How can I post the new values ?

devinemke

fill up the $row array with whatever values you want ($_POST or database)

limey

Thanks for replying. There was a problem with my update sql statement, everything is fine now.